Oh, dear god no! Never!

One or more Saturday Night Live cast members might have been pharmaceutically impaired.

That's just so last century.

Weekend for the Working

I'm always a sucker for an opportunity to have a look at all the little details of a television show set. TV Squad has this marvelous look at the details of the set of (the American version of) The Office here. (And an Office fan-site opens it up for comments here)

I gave up on the American version of The Office after the first ten minutes as it was at that point a bad cover version. It seems to have found its own way. I am amused to find this article about the various international versions, as part of the thesis seems to be that while it is perfectly sensible for there to be an American remake, the creation of French and German remakes is somehow silly.

And continuing with the general theme, check out this video, which I've never seen before. This was the first song that I ever listened to and considered that pop music could have thematic depth. I was eight, so I get some slack for that.

Three tickets

Three tickets for perhaps a streetcar or a train.





I have a feeling that this project is going to be more interactive, as I have more questions about these than answers.

The words in the center are place names in Germany and Austria, so these are obviously mass-transit related. I don't know that area well enough to tell if the places are close together or not.

This is the most complicated punch-card system I've ever seen, but I guess that the punch at the top indicates the value of these tickets, and the lack of other punches would mean that they went unused. I'm also not sure if the rip in the upper right corners are part of the fare taking, or just from being removed from the pad. The fact that the serial numbers are in sequence tells me that they were purchased at the same time.

A word about anonymity (to be specific, mine)

Some of you might be surprised to discover that Xenius Jones is not my real name.

When I began blogging, I thought for a while about the question of anonymity.

A portion of my job entailed writing letters to college students that began with variations of "I regret to inform you that the committee has not decided to..." Experience has shown that a small percentage of students, upon receipt of such a message, will respond with some level of venom, and the addition of Google to the mix meant that I would sooner or later be faced with some rejected munchkin swearing at my blog.

So I thought for a while and picked a name. In the world of author Harry Stephen Keeler, Xenius Jones is a detective who solves crimes (such as the famed "Aeronautic Strangler-Baby Case" in which... oh just go look it up) by studying the fourth-dimensional ripples of causality that emanate from a given event. I felt it appropriate at the time.

From time to time, the identity has been a bit of a crutch. I feel a little twinge for people who are trying to navigate it, who suspect that it might be a fake but don't want to call me on it, just in case it isn't.

On the whole, it's been fine and has served me well.

Yesterday I was offered another job at another institution, and accepted. That's one enormous horrible load off of my mind, replaced by a bunch of tinier happy loads.

One of the happy loads is this blog, and how I want to deal with it in the new workplace. My old workplace was unaware that I was blogging (though I'll bet a couple of people suspected). I may decide to be more open in my new situation. In any event, if I do come out of the blogging closet, it will probably not be soon.

In the meantime, I'd like to take a moment to thank you folks who sent me messages of encouragement, advice, and good thoughts in general.

And a special shout-out to the scholar who used my Amazon link to buy science textbooks.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 53

Yes, the Privileged Few can listen to the sunrise. The rest of us poor shmoes have to settle for looking at it. In any other page context, I might go on about the design styles of the Eighties, but no. I have to get on to this next ad.

Every so often I hear someone gobbling on about how the styles of the Eighties are coming back. I will not believe it until I see some young hipster coming down the sidewalk wearing that primo sailboat number. Without the use of irony.

Honestly, I can't stop looking at this ad. Did he say "Oh, we're going sailing! I have just the sweater to wear!" or was it just some hilarious coincidence?

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 52

I like how they have the fake headlines in this ad, even though there is no graphical reason for it. Notice also how they make note of "catalog 201." That's a code so the folks in Spiegel HQ know exactly where you saw this ad. The catalog costs five bucks now, but you also get a ten dollar gift certificate. That's like they're giving you money.


Every time I look at this ad, I get "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" stuck in my head.

Princess Hotels has sold The Pierre Marques to Fairmont. It looks much less like the wallpaper in Grandma's bathroom now that the new management has come in and spruced the place up.

Behind the scenes of the Green Screen Challenge

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here)

Bonnie R. writes about what it was like to win (which she didn't really do, because it wasn’t a contest) on the Colbert Report. She also has a link to a better def version of her film then the one plastered all over YouTube.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 51

Air France no longer offers the "Aristocrat Tour" offered here. So far as I can see from their website, they have two tours: The "Paris Honeymoon" tour and the "French Riviera" tour. Click for the details of either one and you will get a "Page non trouvée" message. The reason for this is because both of the tour deals were for April 1 to October 31, 2003.

They do have links to hotels so you can book yourself, perhaps at a discount. You can also download .pdf maps and hunks of Lonely Planet guidebooks.

On the plus side, I'll bet that the prices are comparably cheaper now.

I love a good project

via We Make Money Not Art, I learn of another project that has just been completed. The goal of this one: "to photograph every taxidermied polar bear in the UK."

BBC Report

The Artists' website.

The Gallery where the results are displayed.

An article from the telegraph which begins with:

A couple of years ago, Cumbrian artists Bryndis Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson found a polar bear in a pub in Wensleydale. He'd been there for some time, and was completely legless.

If I ever have an opportunity to write something half as interesting as that, I'll (eventually) die a happy man.

Marianne Moore clocks in at the Ford plant

A story from the annals of American Literature that has tickled me for years, via wikipedia:

In 1955, [modernist poet Marianne] Moore was informally invited by Ford's David Wallace, Manager of Marketing Research for Ford's proposed "E" car project and co-worker Bob Young for input and suggestions. Wallace's rationale was "who better to understand the nature of words than a poet."
Moore, a loyal Ford owner, submitted numerous lists which included: "Silver Sword," "Thundercrest" (and "Thundercrester"), "Resilient Bullit," "Intelligent Whale," "Pastelogram," "Adante con Moto" "Varsity Stroke," and "Mongoose Civique." (One name she suggested, "Chaparral", later coincidentally was used for a racing car.) Against the strong objection of her brother, Moore also submitted the name TURCOTINGA, which was a play on the Cotinga (a South American finch) and the color turquoise; however, she noted in her letter to Wallace that it was simply a suggestion; that if he wanted to go in the direction of nature she had several volumes of works that she could review. In a letter dated December 8th 1955, Moore wrote the following:

Mr Young,
May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP? Do not trouble to answer unless you like it. Marianne Moore

All these outside ideas were rejected, although Miss Moore received two dozen roses and a thank you note affectionately addressed to the Top Turtletop, which Moore found amusing. In her reply to Young she regretted that she could not have been more help, and noted that she was looking forward to trying out the vehicle when it was introduced. While Moore's contributions were meant to stir creative thought, and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature, history has greatly exaggerated her relationship to the project. The car was finally christened "the Edsel."

Every so often it strikes me to do something creative with some or all of those interesting car names, so today I decided to see if anyone else had:

• Silver Sword - There are close to 12 million hits for Silver Sword on Google. It seems that the overlap between folks who enjoy computers and folks who enjoy talking about interesting varieties of swords is rather high.
  
• Thundercrest (and Thundercrester) - Thundercrest also brought a bunch of hits having to do with Everquest. Apparently at some point during play you can be "sent in to the Thundercrest Isles to destroy the animated statues created by the drake Kro`val." I doubt if there is a Marianne Moore connection here. "Thundercrester" brought five hits about Moore and her adventures with Edsel, including one in Czechoslovakian.
  
• Resilient Bullit - I'm not sure if "Bullitt" was deliberately misspelled, but either way, nobody seems to be using it -- it's there for the picking.
  
• Intelligent Whale - Check this out:
  

Intelligent Whale was one of a number of submarines built during the Civil War. She was hand-propelled, and steered by horizontal and vertical rudders. Wooden doors on the bottom allowed a diver to exit with a mine. She was purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1869, and brought to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for testing. In September 1872, in her only official Navy test, Intelligent Whale flooded. The crew escaped, but the Navy's interest in her ceased. Intelligent Whale was an early experiment in a field now of great importance.

(Nothing to do with Moore. She wasn't born yet. But, man is that cool!)

• Pastelogram - "Plan59.com" is a particularly lovely site that focuses on 1950's era design. Pastelogram is the name of their blog. Great stuff.
  
• Andante con Moto - Brahms predates Moore as well.
  
• Varsity Stroke - I admit to being more than a little frightened at what I'd get from this. Actually we get a lot of hits about college rowing teams.
  
• Mongoose Civique - Just hits about Moore, but one writer wondered aloud if this name was the inspiration for the "Honda Civic."
  
• Turcotinga - More Moore, but the ratio of non-English hits is rather high.
  
• Utopian Turtletop - Another blog (although it's spelled "uTopian Turtletop"). Mr. Turtletop seems to be a pop culture generalist who is happy to write about whatever strikes his fancy (particularly music). Click through to his own music, which sounds like the sort of stuff that only happens halfway through a Sunday afternoon backyard barbecue when someone says "Hey, let's get the guitars out." Which is, now that I think of it, what the blog feels like, too. That's a compliment, by the way.
  

Catching up with Dave Gorman

The other day we had a friend over for a tremendously low key evening of dinner and complaints about job hunting. After a bit, the consensus came to be that we should watch a video to cheer up the mood, and pulled out Dave Gorman's Googlewack Adventure (UK). It did the trick.

Dave Gorman, after a few false starts, is starting to catch on in America, thanks to his intermittent appearances on The Daily Show. I am happy to see that his television show called "The Dave Gorman Collection" is being released on DVD (The stage show and book were called "Are You Dave Gorman" so the DVD has that title). I'm not linking to Amazon for this one because Dave Gorman has a link to a pre-order from his site. It is advertised as a region free NTSC and PAL DVD. I've never seen a DVD that is both broadcast systems simultaneously, so I'm looking forward to tinkering with it.

We saw the Googlewack show live a few years back. When we travel, we try to see who is playing where, and saw that he was touring. We extrapolated our path with his, and decided that the most convenient place to try and see him was in the town of Aylesbury (We were stopping by friends in Oxford). After the show we stayed to get an autograph and
Dave seemed completely baffled that we would come from America to see him in Aylesbury. After two hours of him explaining how he impulsively travelled around the world to meet random people who found each other on the internet, we thought this a bit odd.

We thought it was a very good show and it seemed that the audience around us was really getting into it. This is what Dave said on his site about the show we attended (ours was the Friday night):

Two very different shows in Aylesbury. The Friday night show was probably the worst one of the tour so far. I don't know if it was me or the audience or ... or anything else, but there were so many things that usually elicit gales of laughter that were getting a smattering, if that. If you were in that audience and I wasn't on form; my apologies.

Well, OK. On behalf of the audience, sorry Dave.

Eagle-eyed readers of this site will have noticed that I occasionally poke a little fun of Aylesbury. I grew up in a city very much like it, near as I can tell. It's the sort of place where everyone either wants to leave as soon as possible, or stay around and make the best of it or kick things. There were a number of very kind people at the town museum, the Civic Centre where the show was, and various shops and pubs who seemed a bit baffled when we showed up. I understand this bafflement. If British tourists suddenly appeared in my home town, I'd have been a bit weirded out too.

Three stories about how I learned more about Aylesbury:

1. There is an underpass between a shopping mall and the train station. As we were wandering around, we found our way there. I thought that it seemed oddly familiar. Turns out that this is the spot where they filmed the scene from the beginning of A Clockwork Orange where Alex and his Droogs beat up the old bum.
2. A couple of days after our visit, Aylesbury was in the news. An old age pensioner who was selling poppies for November 11th was intercepted by a group of youths who bashed in his head with a claw hammer.
3. A while later, Danny Wallace, the co-author of the Are You Dave Gorman book, was in town on a book tour. We showed up for a reading and came up afterward to autograph our copies. After the initial miscue (Danny's first reaction when he saw Dave's autograph was "Are you one of his Googlewacks?") we explained that we were just fans. Then we mentioned where we saw him. The guy who was hawking about a book about how he accidentally started a cult (US UK) was looking at us like we were nuts because we had gone to Aylesbury.

I also notice that the most recent post on Dave Gorman's site indicates that he is up to something, but won't say what. Good luck to him, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 49

Without going back to look over everything, I think we may have hit the first ad for something that I purchase with some regularity. I use it for cooking.

Have a recipe that I make a lot:

Take two pork tenderloins, rubbed with salt and pepper.

Sear them in a frying pan, two minutes for the first side, then rotate a quarter turn for another minute until the meat is completely sealed, then put the pork in a roasting pan and heat in a 400 degree oven until cooked through (20-25ish minutes).

Saute a large chopped union in the pan until it starts to turn goldish. Add a cup of dried cherries and a cup of Sandeman's Founders Reserve Port. Stir with a wooden spoon and scrape browned bits from the bottom of the pan until it starts to thicken, and then add in two tablespoons of orange marmalade and three tablespoons of butter. Stir until incorporated.

Pour sauce over Pork and serve.

(If you have leftovers, it goes great on a pizza.)

I also sometimes pour a cup of it in my special lamb stew (it started off as a chili recipe, but I've tweaked it so much that I think it can no longer be defined as chili).

In any event here is the link to Sandeman's. Notice that the Founder's Reserve is "Named in honour of the Founder." Call me a nut, but I'd think that if you wanted to honor someone by naming something after them, you might actually use their name. Unless the name was something like "Joe Dontbuythisport."

And now, the 1912 project

So here's the scoop:

My Great-Grandfather was an engineer who for a while worked for a company that built primitive deep sea diving equipment. In 1912, he was sent on a trip to meet with a number of European companies. This trip holds a special place in family memory for two reasons:

1. His wife and children were, for reasons lost to time, not allowed to go. The amount of anger that Great-Grandma had about this is legendary.
2. As part of the itinerary, the return journey was to be on the Titanic. Not the maiden voyage, but one a few months after. The Titanic's maiden voyage was taking place as Great Grandpa was crossing in the other direction, and the two ships crossed within sight of each other.
   

A few years ago, as my grandparents house was being emptied, I was asked if I would be interested in a package of souvenirs from this trip. I jumped at this chance: he was an excellent and obsessive photographer, and the photos he took on this trip must have been incredible.

Someone else in the family got the photos.

What I got is in some ways even more cool. I got his receipts.

It looks like every piece of paper that he pulled out of his luggage went into big manila envelope. Ticket stubs, train schedules, menus, maps, brochures, whatever. I know those bits because they're the same sort of things that I pull out of my suitcase when I come home from a trip.

Here's the deal. I'm going to scan everything and post it here, with as much commentary as I can manage.

Bon Voyage!

Unpacking is fun

When I travelled through Norway a number of years back, I made certain to stop at a few record shops to pick up some local stuff.

One of the CDs that I found had a track that I was particularly fond of. I played it often , and then the CD was swallowed up into one of my boxes. After a few years, I began to fear that I had lost it. (I had played it frequently at my old workplace and I thought that it was possible that I had left it there.)

I couldn't remember the name of the CD or the song. All I could remember was that the band's leader's first name was Odd (which is a common Norwegian first name) so the band had been named "Something Odd."

Go to google and search for the phrase "Something Odd" and you'll see what I was up against.

A couple of days ago, I opened a box, and there it was.

The leader of Something Odd was a fellow named Odd Nordstoga. Wikipedia has a nice long article about him (which seems to have been translated verbatim from the Norwegian Wikipedia article about him (It's in bokmål, the nynorsk version is pretty sparse at the moment. (I understand most of you have no idea what I'm talking about, but I also know that a couple of you do, so bear with me))).

The CD was titled "Solreven" and the song was "Fuggel i Karmen."

It's like a big weight has been lifted.

Quick link

Here's a good interview/article on Stephen Colbert

I don't want this blog to become the "properties" section of Mojo Magazine, but...

Now John Lennon's house is for sale.

I renew acquaintance with an old friend

As part of the slow removal of me from my place of work, I now find myself in a new office. To be exact, I've been given a desk in the photocopier room.

One of the few benefits of my new situation is I can play my music a bit louder.

So, for the first time in ages, I've been listening to Virgin Radio. Ten years ago, I worked in an office that I could listen to internet radio in, and I listened to Virgin quite a lot. The mid-late nineties were much like the early eighties in that there was a ton of decent music being made in the UK that was very slowly trickling over here.

The nostalgia continues with their format. In the course of two day's listening I've heard Oasis ("Wonderwall"), Coldplay ("Yellow") and Travis ("Why Does It Always Rain on Me?") -- all songs I first heard on Virgin. As soon as I hear "Perfect Ten" by The Beautiful South, I will know that I have come home.

There is some amount of difference -- "Pete and Geoff" have turned into just plain old "Geoff," and yet the banter sounds exactly the same. The current contest involves a big star that listeners have to guess how much cash it is filled with. Once I figured that out, I was disappointed as I thought that they were talking about Big Star.

There's some new stuff too, I've been happy to hear KT Tunstall after hearing about her for a while. Likewise the Kaiser Chiefs and Snow Patrol came off decently (I'd been avoiding listening to them purposefully as it felt like they'd been rammed down my throat as the Next Big Thing). Ray Lamontagne seems to be the current hot commodity, although his single leaves me cold.

One song that was played quite a bit was a curious drunken romp that was so catchy that at first I thought it was an advertisement. The fact that it didn't pop up in the "just played" listings seemed to confirm that. Then I had a look at the "just played" fine print.

We play songs two ways on Virgin Radio, from a studio complex including three studios that are on-air capable.

This system will recognise nearly all songs played off our playout system, as long as the tracks are loaded into the songs area of that system.

It'll also recognise most CDs our presenters play. However, not all the CDs we play are in our system: during some parts of our programming, we may not recognise all the CDs we play - there are thousands of CDs, after all. If you want to come in and do some typing, let us know.

The next time I'm planning on coming to town, I might just take them up on that offer. Seriously.

In any event, a few plays later, and someone had typed the name of the song into their computer system. It was "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis. It's one of those songs that I really liked the first five times I heard it, but I can see how it can get old really fast. I am certain that at this very moment a pack of drunks are jumping up and down, ignoring the lyrics and yelling "Yabba dabba Dabba dabba Yabba dabba Dabbily Dabb-Bah. Oh Yeah!" at the top of their lungs.

This reminds me. I haven't heard "Tubthumper" yet either.

Album cover art battle

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 48

A thousand words? Sounds like a challenge.

The goofy boat thing in the picture is a charter cruise boat on the San Antonio River. The San Antonio River seems to have had man-made canals added that do a couple of circuits through the downtown and pull up to various buildings. Boats can be hired, and then you can co-ordinate with various restaurants to have a catered dinner on the boat.

The picture in the ad looks a little daft - you can't see that it's in a river. The photos that I've been able to find of the area make it look quite attractive. But the area is not without its problems. The fact that they have an annual "Mud Festival" might raise a few flags, and recent comments from soft-spoken media magnate Mark Cuban should sum it up. ("Ugly-ass, muddy-watered thing.")

The bottom line seems to be: Interesting place to see. Don't fall in.

(That's no thousand words. Dang. I lose.)

Get behind me, real estate agent!

Now up for sale, Jack White's Detroit home. "Get Behind Me Satan" was recorded in the staircase/foyer.

Go to the history tab and read about the previous owners - I don't think that's a picture of Jack White in his paragraph.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 47

One presumes that once the hotel opened, these two were able to get a room.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 46

The Shakers believe that one should live a simple life and take pride in working hard to create things that are well made and of a plain yet clever design.

Thus they have all but died out.

If you go to the website for Shaker Workshops, you can play with their "Virtual Chair and Tape Weaver" to pick the color of the seat and back weave as the design and wood stain. 'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free. And speaking of free, they no longer charge a buck for a catalog. Unless you're foreign.

The Light Opera Gallery still sells Russian Lacquer Boxes. They're all well and good, but if you go there, be sure to check out the blown glass. Trust me on this one.

The Hilo Steiner lamp store went out of business in 1996. There is a glass lamp filled with shells on the dresser in my bedroom. It might be one of these. There isn't a label on it, so it might not be one of these. Who knows?

Yes, the Tryall Ad was sideways in the magazine, so I'm keeping it sideways. It's a touch more interesting that way. They are really proud of their golf. And their villas are enchanted! This explains the bird carrying a golf club.

Holy Cow! The La Recolte was shut down five months after this ad ran! Read the news here. The restaurant was turned into a hunk of a hotel ballroom and Christian Leveque was shipped up to Toronto. I hope that the residents of Picardie don't take it personal.

Things I find

I found three CDs that had fallen behind a stack of books in my room. My guess is that I bought them and promptly lost track of them. So I put them on as I unpacked boxes and listened to them for perhaps the first time.

The Mooney Suzuki - Electric Sweat (US UK)

There was roughly a month that this group was the next big thing. It's sort of sad that simply by virtue of being a decent New York-style bar band, you become the great hope of the music industry. Two things struck me as I listened to this: First, I think that every time I got a lift from a friend's older brother in grade school, this is what was playing in their Camero. Second, just after the fifth track ended, I thought that it had the sort of ending that would make sense as the end of an album side. A bit later, I had a look at the back of the CD case, I saw that they indeed had the tracks split up into album sides, and I had spotted the change correctly. I can't decide if I think this is stupid or not.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (US UK)

I feel strangely relieved to have enjoyed this, as I have the strange feeling that if I didn't, I would be chased up a windmill by a pitchfork weilding mob. It wasn't the sort of thing that stays in my mind after it ends, but for something to listen to as you're assembling shelving and unpacking boxes of books, it is a fine choice.

Robbie Williams - Sing When You're Winning (US UK)

Friends don't let friends shop for music drunk.

Seriously though, when his debut album came out in America I was impressed. I thought that about six or eight tracks were really good, a pretty good ratio. Turns out that his American debut was, for all intents and purposes, a "greatest hits" compilation. So the hit/miss ratio was really not as high as it seemed. This album reflects the corrected ratio. A couple of good moments, but not enough to let me reccomend it.

"Someone's killed their children and made them into cookies: and I want to go see that!"

Enjoy the trailer for For Your Consideration.

Tales from the set

Ken Levine blogs about the details of the set of Cheers.

Fascinating stuff.

The Comic Strip, Interlude - Well, so long as we are all trapped in this meat locker, we might as well pass the time by reminiscing.

At this point I should have guessed that theres a bunch of Comic Strip clips up on Youtube. Enjoy a few, and click through for more.